Love you from afar
by Likeasummerstorm
Summary: They say your life flashes before your eyes right before you die — but when has life ever given Bellamy Blake anything? (Repost from AO3 for those not on there)


He really shouldn't have been surprised, he thought — when had any of life's nicer clichés applied to him?

He was dying, and all Bellamy felt was an ironic appreciation that even in death, life screwed him over. No last memories. No life history flashing before his eyes. Not even a fucking white light. After the fight had been literally choked out of him, all that remained was the quiet insolence of a dying rebel.

Because he had fought. He'd fought like hell. Like only a caged, dying animal can — gasping, choking, clinging to life with crippled hands. He'd spared no energy for wistful reminiscing then. He hadn't needed to feel the ghost of his mother's strong embrace again or hear the echoes of five-year-old Octavia's delighted squeals as she rode piggyback around their rooms. He'd fought the noose dragging him closer and closer to death, not out of some misplaced nostalgia, but rather an instinctual desire for life, life itself.

And if his body had had any oxygen to spare, Bellamy would have laughed at that. Yet another cruel twist of fate to add to the running tally. Just 10 days before, he had felt none of that intrinsically human desire for life. Hell, he had practically begged to die. And he could tell himself it had just been the hallucinogenic nuts talking, but sometimes, in the rare quiet minutes when he wasn't consumed with keeping 80-odd teens alive, the truth snuck up on Bellamy. A part of him — he still wasn't sure how large a part — had honestly abandoned the idea of living. Survival — the most fundamental of human desires — had held no appeal. What a sad state of affairs, Bellamy thought, having life stolen away just as he finally began wanting to live it again.

He couldn't point to a precise moment that change had happened, but he knew why. It had started with hearing the words "I need you. We all need you." but it had been steadily building each subsequent day. A flood of images flashed through his brain — the day the wall was finally completed; the brief contentment he felt keeping watch over a night of bonfire- and moonshine-fueled revelry; standing beside Clarke, feeling her stubborn strength seep into his soul, as they made the most difficult decisions together; listening to the human thrum of energy as he stood in the center of a crowd, speaking to his people. The 100 needed him, and he, in turn, lived for them. After a lifetime as Octavia's brother, Octavia's protector, Bellamy needed to be needed.

Of course it was more than that. There was something more than being needed. There was something — someone, maybe? — that had given Bellamy not just a purpose for living, but a desire for it. But the memory proved too elusive for his oxygen-starved brain. All coherent thought, for that matter, was proving difficult.

The burning in his lungs was gone, he distantly noticed, and the heavy ache of the strap around his throat had faded. The rebel's insolence had dissipated with the pain. And for the first time in his life, Bellamy Blake accepted an immutable reality: He was dying. Not in some far distant future, not even tomorrow at the end of a grounder's spear. No, here and now. The inky mist obscuring his vision confirmed that, as did the absence of any sound other than his own rapidly slowing heartbeat pounding in his ears. The world was quite literally fading away.

He thought he heard someone call his name – someone whose feminine voice burned with a desperate panic, and he thought immediately, joyously of Clarke. But it must have been a trick – his dying brain taking pity and giving him one last instant of happiness. He had heard nothing. Clarke was almost certainly dead, and, besides, everything was so quiet. Even the dull thud of his heartbeat had faded away. The darkness that had been dampening his vision since he'd lost the ability to fight the noose had finally consumed his sight. The blackness was as complete as the silence. This was finally death, he realized: nothing beautifully tragic or honorable, just an absence. A dull emptiness.

With the last spark of his life, Bellamy Blake thought of their former home in the sky. Outside the walls of the Ark, this must be what space felt like – immeasurable silence and infinite blackness. Oblivion.

Suddenly, he gasped. He could breathe.


End file.
